Windturbine Project

 

Torness Power Station. Watercolour

This page is about the project that I devised for my final term at Leith School of Art. In fact it is a sort of sub-project of my larger fascination with industrial landscapes, particularly industry set in a rural landscape. I grew up in the South Wales Valleys where you could see pit heads, ancient iron works and modern steelworks in valley bottoms, but with mountains towering over them. Travelling over the hills at night you could see the glow of steel works where my father worked, and the whole place would smell like hot metal. Streets of terraced houses grow up the mountain slopes, but it was farms and sheep that were on the top. This juxtaposition makes rich and exciting visual images. I lived in the history of the Industrial Revolution. 

I am not sure exactly when I came aware of artist such as Ibbetson, Gilpin, Childs and Horner. I think I came across them in local museums and art galleries. These artists were finding beauty in the grim reality of backbreaking work and industrial processes. They may have been romanticising the ideal of  physical labour, they may be trying to convey the heat and discomfort of the place, but they were also celebrating the advances of technology of the time. 

So, I find beauty in the great monsters that generate power from wind and I want to celebrate that feeling. 

Leith School of Art Landscapes Course – project “Connections”

 

Landscape and Wind-turbines: Energy and the environment

 This project is to make people understand the positive effects of wind turbines and demonstrate their power, beauty and magnificence. I am believe in the use and promotion of good environmental practices and attempt to live my life accordingly, as much as I can in a small way. The philosophy behind this project is Permaculture which advocates working with nature rather than attempting to work against it and which promotes a connected approach to life. There are three ethical statements; Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share. This basically means that you should look after your and the wider environment, people all over the world and to be non discriminatory – every individual has the right to have an equal share of food, education, health and the other beneficial aspects of life – there should be enough to go around.

Permaculture is an evolving and developing philosophy which is guided by a set of principles. Roughly summarised these include: Work with nature, start changing in a small way, produce no waste, use and value renewable resources, catch and store energy. There are more, and some variations, but the ones I have listed are the most relevant to this project. I have always loved artefacts in landscapes that some people may consider eyesores, such as ruined farms and barns, electricity wires crossing pastoral scenes, pylons striding over fields. Now I have a fascination with wind turbines, on their own or as wind farms. I find them awe inspiring. There is something so stately and regal about them if not vaguely intimidating as well. In today’s society electricity is used to run everything in our lives and it would be very difficult, even for me, to live without it. However, environmental and green issues are important to me, so I believe that power producing wind turbines should be promoted and celebrated.

Although wind farms can extend over large areas of land or sea, the space that they take up at ground level is considerably less than power stations (Coal, nuclear or wood burning). Between each turbine tower, sheep and cows can graze, grass grows, birds and insects fly, and in the sea fish and other aquatic creatures live around them and carry on as normal. Electricity is produces cleanly with no waste products dispersed into the environment. I want my paintings to reflect the way that wind turbines fit into a landscape, even in places that are beautiful in their own right. I want to demonstrate that nature carries on around them and will include animals, birds and maybe even insects in the images. I want to show the ubiquity of them – look at the distance and see how many you can find on the horizon? I want to paint them in all seasons and weather conditions.

There are also different designs, some that rotate horizontally and some that move vertically.  There are small domestic models that have fewer blades. There are many manufacturers with their own designs. I will seek out and paint wind turbines of different designs. Not all wind turbines are in a rural landscape, there are some in urban environments as well. Ultimately I will make a visual record of these also.

I prefer to paint with oil paints or water colours rather than acrylic paints. I feel that they fit the ethos of Earth Care better than acrylics as it is a synthetic substance. Taking the principle of no waste, I will use fabric that has already had one life, as a tablecloth, shirt, pair of jeans and give it a new life. This reduces waste because that fabric will not be thrown away; the effort and energy used to produce it in the first place will be respected. Other items that may be considered waste may be used as well, such as off-cuts of wood, cardboard or paper.

The aim is to produce art that makes people think about the issues involved, to raise emotions of Awe, Beauty, Power and get people loving wind turbines.

Connections

Wind, earth, energy, land, sky, animals, creatures, technology, forces, power, people, conservation, nature. 

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